What we could learn from the Dutch

Alright, so its been awhile since we have heard from the boogey man, but he finally made himself known. Thanks to BBC, who has the balls to publish his missives in full, instead of commentating on fragments of what he says. Anyway, most of his threats this time are directed at several European entities, including the EU, the Pope and Dutch newspapers, for publishing depictions of the Prophet Mohammed which is against Islamic law. Now I don't care to applaud anyone who intentionally inflames international tensions, but there is something inspiring about how the Dutch newspapers have responded to this threat. The author of these cartoons has had his life threatened and the response was to republish the cartoons, basically a big F.U. to terrorists around the world. The Dutch Government responded by saying that the threat of Bin Laden was not going to change anything about their security measures, saying "its nothing new". In general, it appears that Europe is not terribly concerned about this threat, giving America a dose of shame for crapping our pants every time someone tries to sneak a knife onto an airplane. Let's take a look at how to be brave, from those cowardly Europeans who resisted our invasion of Iraq in the first place.

And you thought you could trust your government

Ok, I hate to keep bringing up the same topics over and over, but if Goebbels taught me anything, it's that repetition will pay off eventually. You may or may not remember that about 1 year ago, the FBI underwent an audit that revealed that they were abusing their powers to spy on law-abiding Americans without just cause. The most blatant abuses had to do with so-called National Security Letters. Basically, the FBI is abusing a power that they should not have in the first place, which is to deny American's to face their accusers in a court of law and every American's right to legal representation. These letters reek of Gestapo-esque activity. So we found out that in 2003-2005, the FBI was breaking the law by abusing the spirit of these subpoenas in order to spy on American's who had not been proved to actually have done anything wrong. What's most interesting to me is that this abuse did not take decades to develop; it happened soon after the FBI - an agency charged with enforcing and upholding the law - got these powers in the Patriot Act.

This is not some abstract theory about the proclivities of law enforcement to abuse power, these are concrete examples. And the treatment that FBI Director Robert Mueller received from Congress for his inability to bring this abuse by his agency under control betrays the true attitude of Congress, which is, "We don't care." Indeed Mueller's audacity is revealed in his recent testimony before Congress in which he tried to direct the focus of the hearing to pushing for Bush's demand for immunity for telecom companies who allowed the FBI to break the law by eavesdropping without a FISA warrant. How ironic is that? This guy should be fired if he won't resign. Only in the Government would such incompetence and flouting of the Law be tolerated.